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Power Rangers

Xerxes82 said:
Explicitly says? No. Heavily implies? Yes. Between Rita's reaction, which is less "Grrr, they're farther along in their training than I'd thought" and much more "WTF?! What is that thing!", and the fact that Billy names the it the Megazord, and nobody has the slightest idea how to pilot it (compare to the Zords individually, where they all have almost instant ability to control them after they tranform).

If they wanted us to believe it was just an advanced Ranger move, I think they'd have used Rita to work the Megazord name in. "Oh no, not the Megazord!" or something of the sort. But they didn't. Also, it's not all uncommon for stories of this type to posit that the current iteration of the heroes is somehow special, or extra capable somehow, to justify their victory when previous generations have failed. The Megazord in the film is, to use another film as analogy, Neo becoming The One at the end of the Matrix
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Yup. That's why I said it was a stretch.
 
Gaith said:
I hereby predict worldwide grosses of less than 22 Jump Street's $331m. Will they fall even below 21 Jump Street's $201m? Time will tell. (It'll certainly have a hard time matching either movie's budget multipliers.) In the meantime, I will note that the movie should totally have featured college, rather than high school kids, and been rated R.
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The movie doesn't open in China and Japan until May and July, respectively, it looks as though the movie may not make $100m domestically. Quoth Box Office Mojo:

Lionsgate's Power Rangers finished in fourth place with an estimated $14.5 million signaling a 64% second weekend drop, the worst among the top ten. While the film's $40 million opening was noteworthy, the $100 million price tag and such a steep drop doesn't necessarily help its sequel chances. That said, it did add $8.1 million internationally this weekend from 70 markets bringing its worldwide cume to just shy of $100 million with openings in France, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Finland and Sweden next week followed by a late April release in South Korea, May release in China and a July release in Japan.​
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One of the best covers of the PR theme I have ever heard. With bagpipes no less. Even Ron Wasserman gives his stamp of approval!
 
"No, no, Power Rangers"?! io9 reports that the movie opened in China this past weekend, and was a yuge failure.

Before the Power Rangers reboot hit theaters a few months, Lionsgate talked a big game about having long-term plans for the movie franchise. Those plans might have to be shelved now, though, thanks to a disastrous box office performance in China this past weekend.

While the movie’s performance in the West didn’t exactly set the world on fire, Power Rangers was at least on track for a potential sequel if it performed well when it opened in China this past weekend... which it very much didn’t. Power Rangers scraped in a measly $1.4 million dollars in its opening day in the country, culminating in an opening weekend of just $3.3 million dollars. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, in contrast, took in $49.4 million in its recent opening weekend in China.​

The movie's worldwide B.O. is now $138m. The upcoming Japanese release will add some beans to the pot, but this $100m-budgeted flick will almost certainly end up losing its studio tens of millions.

Looks as though they should have gone with my Jump Street-ification advice. :p
 
^ You mean the one that worked so well for Dredd?!

Production Budget: $50m
Domestic B.O.: $13.4
Worldwide B.O.: $35.5m

This movie's problem wasn't in not going really grim and gritty, it was going in that direction at all. IMHO. ;)
 
So you think going full on 90's camp would have worked better? Just skip the teeny angst stuff and go for the little kid audience?
I'm not sure. That's not a movie I would have gone to see but maybe my time is up and my Power Rangers are dead and gone better left to memory and YouTube. ;)

I saw so little promo material for Dredd when it came out that definitely hurt it. I loved the movie personally
 
Akiraprise said:
So you think going full on 90's camp would have worked better? Just skip the teeny angst stuff and go for the little kid audience?
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I've already twice said what I think would have worked: "Jump Street-ification" - as in, a totally contemporary, raunchy, sunny, upbeat R-rated meta-spoof on the material. Most of the MMPR heyday's fans are now in their mid-20s to early 30s, and they've been inundated with superhero movies featuring adults for more than a decade now, so why would they go see a grim and gritty reboot targeting today's teens? From the previews, this looked like a remake of Chronicle, stripped of that movie's subversive edge and nastiness.

Given how dumb the material is, I'm indeed not sure a non-ironic 90s camp take would have done any better with audiences than the movie itself did. But, that's not what I advised. ;)
 
Gaith said:
I've already twice said what I think would have worked: "Jump Street-ification" - as in, a totally contemporary, raunchy, sunny, upbeat R-rated meta-spoof on the material.
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Ugh, I would've hated that. I don't get why Hollywood does so many spoof/comedy revivals of shows that were played more or less straight, if kitschy, in their original form. It seems disrespectful. There are ways to update and deepen a concept without condescending and mocking it.

Heck, you want a smart, sophisticated, funny deconstruction of Power Rangers that's also a solid, well-done action-adventure, just look at Power Rangers RPM. It's already been achieved successfully. It had fun with the tropes of the franchise rather than just smugly making fun of them, and it was true to what Power Rangers was rather than grafting a cliched, generic "raunchy" Hollywood formula on something that has always been, in its own weird way, basically quite wholesome. I hate it that so many feature-film remakes are more about forcing the properties into the standardized movie formulas that executives like, rather than being true to what the shows originally were.

And I still find it weird to see Power Rangers being approached as a nostalgia property when it's still being made today. I would've liked to see a movie that was a new, in-universe continuation of the existing TV franchise, introducing a whole new team rather than remaking MMPR and reusing its character names for characters who are completely different people anyway. Maybe they could've built it around ideas and designs from GoBusters, since the TV show skipped that season.
 
Christopher said:
Ugh, I would've hated that. I don't get why Hollywood does so many spoof/comedy revivals of shows that were played more or less straight, if kitschy, in their original form. It seems disrespectful.
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No doubt because it appeals to their senses of humor? I respect your scholarly devotion to your various fandoms, but that doesn't mean there isn't a place for "spoof/comedy revivals" also. And great comedy is very often disrespectful, so... *shrug*

Christopher said:
something that has always been, in its own weird way, basically quite wholesome.
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It's a franchise about child soldiers, is it not?

Christopher said:
And I still find it weird to see Power Rangers being approached as a nostalgia property when it's still being made today.
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I imagine the vast majority of the adults who once made up the heyday of MMPR popularity are completely unaware of that fact. ;)
 
Gaith said:
No doubt because it appeals to their senses of humor? I respect your scholarly devotion to your various fandoms, but that doesn't mean there isn't a place for "spoof/comedy revivals" also. And great comedy is very often disrespectful, so... *shrug*
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Scholarship has nothing to do with it. I'm speaking from a fan's perspective. When I'm a fan of a property, I want to see it remade in a way that captures what made it work, rather than superimposing its surface tropes onto some set Hollywood formula that has nothing to do with what it really was. And even if I'm not a fan of something, I recognize that the people who are its fans would probably feel the same way, and would deserve to have those wishes honored.

One of the best TV-remake movies I've seen was The A-Team. It changed a lot from the show -- it was bigger, more serious, more violent, more modern -- but it changed and updated things in ways that were true to the spirit of the original. As I put it in my blog review, "I’ve rarely seen a film revival of an old show that did a better job of adaptation — capturing the essence of the original while also making it new, bigger, and better. The characters were recognizably themselves, only more so. They were more fully developed and nuanced. The action was much bigger, the humor edgier, the zaniness and absurdity elevated to an art." It took what worked about the original and amplified or refined it, rather than mocking it as a piece of kitsch.


It's a franchise about child soldiers, is it not?
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No, it's a fantasy about teen or young-adult superheroes. It's silly to treat it as being about violence, because the "violence" is so stylized and fanciful that it's basically just interpretive dance with fireworks. And everything else about it is as clean-cut and wholesome as you can get.


I imagine the vast majority of the adults who once made up the heyday of MMPR popularity are completely unaware of that fact. ;)
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Yes, and I consider that a shame, because MMPR was terrible compared to many of the later seasons. It had one of the best casts, but really bad writing and production values compared to what followed. It's sad that the only part of the franchise that's widely remembered is one of its very worst parts.
 
Christopher said:
I recognize that the people who are its fans would probably feel the same way, and would deserve to have those wishes honored.
[...] MMPR was terrible compared to many of the later seasons. It had one of the best casts, but really bad writing and production values compared to what followed. It's sad that the only part of the franchise that's widely remembered is one of its very worst parts.
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So you acknowledge that most general audiences only know of MMPR as something that was terrible when it was popular, and aren't aware that it's continued and (allegedly) drastically improved. Ergo, why not give former kid fans of the terrible incarnation a winking, silly send-up flick? Is the LEGO Batman movie "disrespectful" to fans of the darker and grittier comics, or is there room for both?

Christopher said:
One of the best TV-remake movies I've seen was The A-Team. It changed a lot from the show -- it was bigger, more serious, more violent, more modern -- but it changed and updated things in ways that were true to the spirit of the original.
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And it lost so much money. So either the fans of the long-dead TV series didn't bother to show up, or there weren't that many of them to begin with, or both. I think fans of old shows generally "deserve" DVD/iTunes releases of the series they know and love. When it comes to mega-budget big-screen adaptations, however... it helps to be flexible, to understate things.

I'm honestly curious: have you seen the (critically beloved and totally profitable) Jump Street films?

Christopher said:
No, it's a fantasy about teen or young-adult superheroes. It's silly to treat it as being about violence, because the "violence" is so stylized and fanciful that it's basically just interpretive dance with fireworks. And everything else about it is as clean-cut and wholesome as you can get.
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So, child soldiers with a happy face. ;)
 
Haven't seen it and this is pure spitballin' but I wonder if the movie wouldn't have done better with the same approach but had a really great looking megazord that was updated but still recognizable and similarly with the vllains. The trailers tried to avoid spilling the beans that it was a Power Ranger movie in a Chronicle-type fashion but left it that (and maybe the movie does too, I don't know) but I think they should've dropped the other shoe with the action. Update it to be cinematic cool but hints at a generic robot and a gold blob didn't do much for me at least.
 
Gaith said:
So you acknowledge that most general audiences only know of MMPR as something that was terrible when it was popular, and aren't aware that it's continued and (allegedly) drastically improved. Ergo, why not give former kid fans of the terrible incarnation a winking, silly send-up flick?
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Because I'd rather see them get something that captures the spirit better than the original did -- as later seasons of the TV franchise actually have done -- then something that insults the fans for liking it. I don't find mean-spirited negativity funny. And doing a "raunchy" version of Power Rangers wouldn't even be about Power Rangers -- it'd just be what these things so often are, just the superficial trappings being grafted onto a hackneyed, generic filmmaking formula because studio executives are morons who don't understand anything that doesn't fit the finite number of formulas they're used to.

Is the LEGO Batman movie "disrespectful" to fans of the darker and grittier comics, or is there room for both?
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I haven't seen that movie, but judging from its predecessor, it doesn't seem anything like the kind of crude R-rated movie you were proposing. And you weren't listening, because I already cited an example of a way to do a good satire of PR, the same way RPM did. I'm not objecting to affectionate satire, just the kind of "comedy" remake we too often get these days where the movie is unrecognizable as the thing it's based on.

And it lost so much money. So either the fans of the long-dead TV series didn't bother to show up, or there weren't that many of them to begin with, or both.
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I don't care about that! I'm not a studio beancounter, I'm a moviegoer who wants to see good movies. I'm expressing my personal opinion about what kind of movies I want to see and what kind I don't want to see.


I'm honestly curious: have you seen the (critically beloved and totally profitable) Jump Street films?
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No. I never watched the original show, and I'm barely even aware of the movies based on it. I saw a trailer for the sequel once and was rather bewildered that this was even a thing. But I've explained why I don't like the trend of "remakes" that have more to do with forcing the concept into a stock movie formula than actually capturing what worked about the original.
 
Christopher said:
I don't find mean-spirited negativity funny. [...]
No. I never watched the original show, and I'm barely even aware of the movies based on it. I saw a trailer for the sequel once and was rather bewildered that this was even a thing. But I've explained why I don't like the trend of "remakes" that have more to do with forcing the concept into a stock movie formula than actually capturing what worked about the original.
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If you haven't caught up with the Jump Street movies by now, in comedy pop culture terms, that's on you, hombre. The first has a Metacritic score of 69, the second, 71 - especially impressive for a comedy sequel. Even more notably, Metacritic doesn't link to a single red/Negative review for either. (And their Rotten Tomatoes Top Critic scores are 91% and 84%.)

Hint: they didn't get those scores with "mean-spirited negativity"; indeed, they're actually very big-hearted flicks about an unlikely but deep and devoted platonic male friendship. So when I suggest that Power Rangers "Jump Street-ify", I respectfully submit, based on your comments so far, that you have no idea what I mean. ;)

Christopher said:
studio executives are morons who don't understand anything that doesn't fit the finite number of formulas they're used to.
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I'm disappointed to read this sort of "mean-spirited negativity" from you; I've grown accustomed to you having a more measured and compassionate outlook.
 
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